Taking Care
by MacBedh
Summary: In the end, there will be time to enjoy the classics - and the old favourites. Inspired by Day of the Doctor, featuring the Caretaker.


**Taking Care**

- x -

The place really did need more opportunities for people to sit down. Art galleries _never_ had enough chairs. Too many long hallways and rambling exhibit halls. Too many extraordinary pieces, each one meriting long contemplation . . . every art gallery should have enough seats for that.

The Caretaker walked slowly through the corridors, enjoying the quiet, the soft and comforting light – clear but not glaring – and, most of all, the sense of peace. The hush spread through the halls, and even on the days when there were many visitors, voices tended to become subdued once the atmosphere had gotten into them.

He turned out of the Sainsbury Wing, with its magnificent paintings from the European Renaissance of Earth, and cut through the Pennethorne Gallery, one of his favourite shortcuts, although it was rarely short. It was easy to lose a lot of time in the Pennethorne: the mistily-lit walls were hung with paintings and lined with sculptures that no longer existed in any person's living memory. War and catastrophe didn't only kill people and animals; hope and beauty and the works of the imaginative minds of history were also vulnerable. It was an act of silent, intense defiance for such things to exist at all, preserved here in a fold of temporal impossibility.

Between the section of hallway graced with the lovely murals of San Helios City, and the rotunda where the Aphrodite of Knidos smiled her bewitching smile amongst the abstract mosaics of Traken's greatest artist, an archway led into the Zygajvex Wing. Here, the ceilings soared to four times the height of a standard humanoid, enough to accommodate the immensely tall Diplosians native to the planet where this particular gallery was physically moored, and to show the tall, narrow paintings and etiolated energy-sculpts they favoured.

An entire tour group of Pooshites were flitting around the clerestory level, ooing and aahing and plinking with delight. The Caretaker waved amiably at one of them and directed the group towards the oculus that opened into the Darp Sphere. A broad grin brightened his face as the joyful plinking became louder. Not many races could fully appreciate the works in the aerial galleries, since not many races could fly up to reach them.

The Pooshite tourists would be shot on sight as prey if they actually left the gallery and emerged onto the surface of Darp, but the Doorways would prevent that. And they'd never know the difference, nor would the Darpzelt. .Prime had fallen into crumbling ruin centuries before the Poosh universities were originally founded. Since the Pooshites were the wrong era as well as the wrong galactic sector, they'd be unable even to see the local planetary exits, and the indigenous natives wouldn't see them.

The Doorways were important, and the Caretaker spent a good deal of time on his rounds checking them to make sure they were all working and properly calibrated. Even well-intentioned tourists had to be kept from straying into – or out of – the wrong wing, the wrong zone, the wrong time.

He checked several Doorways as he strolled through the next set of galleries, pausing to fiddle with one that screened portions of the Arcateen Wing from the Qualactine sculpture garden. He noticed a woman – Earth human, mid-Empire, probably 48th century – standing in front of one of the sonic/scent installations, looking immeasurably sad. It wasn't the right kind of sadness, either, not for that particular piece, which usually smelled of soft spring mornings (or occasionally, nutmeg and ginger). She wasn't finding comfort in her grief, either; she was fighting back tears.

The Caretaker touched a control on the remote device in his pocket.

A grinding noise infiltrated the wing, a subliminal cyclic scraping that lay just below the threshold of awareness. The sound could not be heard by the conscious mind, but the woman looked suddenly hopeful again.

She squared her shoulders, unconsciously, stopped fighting the tears and let them flow, moving on to the next installation. Excellent. That one smelled (to most races with an olfactory sense) of warm sunlight and crisp frost, and led the mind into fresh starts and glimpses around new corners. The grinding noise continued for several moments more before fading away.

_Wheezing like a grampus_. The Caretaker smiled fondly at the thought.

It was time for tea.

He walked into another of the Earth-Human galleries, probably the one where the woman had come from before she strayed into the Qualactine garden. This one had what it grandly and ironically touted as a Modern Art section, featuring a full-sized replica of a 1960s Police Call Box from Sol III. The colour wasn't at all right and the proportions were off, but the Caretaker had carefully refrained from telling any of the local gallery staff. They wouldn't understand, and they might even begin to wonder who he was, since he wasn't actually listed as staff in the museum computer records. He ought to fix that one of these days, he supposed, but that computer was such a fusspot that he really didn't like having to muck around in it.

Between two immense sworls of insanely clashing jagged coloured lines against a viridian background – the staff thought they were abstract compositions, when in fact they were formal portraits of the founding monarchs of Siralia – another Doorway opened into a small connecting corridor.

The Caretaker glanced around to make sure he was quite alone, and snapped his fingers smartly. The sound of the grinding and wheezing returned, at an audible level this time, and a door materialized in the blank wall in front of him.

He snapped his fingers again and the door swung open. A broad and delighted smile lit the old man's face and his blue eyes softened. Inside, his last and most dearly loved Companion would be waiting for him to return from his rounds.

He wondered, with a doubly quickened heartbeat of anticipation, what she would look like today – she knew him so well, understood how nostalgic he sometimes became. She often dressed up these days in her old outfits, made herself up in the fashions of her youth and his.

Stepping through the entrance – such a simple threshold to cross, with home on the other side. The door swung comfortably and silently closed behind him. Inside, the room was bathed in soft white light: the honeycomb walls, between the repeating recessed roundels, were the soft luminous white of fine porcelain. A gentle hum emanated from nowhere in particular, a sound that was neither mechanical nor electronic, and wasn't quite star hiss – if the stars purred instead of hissing, perhaps that would be it. Yes. Definitely. Perhaps he'd check, one of these days . . . although that would mean traveling again, and he'd quite gotten out of the habit of going out to check on the Universe. The Universe had been doing so very well at coming to see him instead, and it was really quite restful without ever getting boring.

The central column of the control console did not rise or fall in the quiescent ship, but the mechanisms inside quivered almost imperceptibly, sparks of green light flickering up and down the visible portion of the internal workings. A slow smile spread across the Caretaker's face, his teeth flashing as white as the immaculate walls.

"Splendid, old girl," he said aloud. "One of my favourites." He fondly patted the console between the rows of old-fashioned switches. "You're still as beautiful as ever."

Beside the console waited a comfortable stuffed chair and a small side table where a tray rested. A thin thread of steam trailed from the spout of the Yixing teapot. There were sandwiches and scones and biscuits on a plate, and the tea was hot, still hot, always.

The tea never seemed to get cold these days. Retirement was sweet.

_~ fin ~_


End file.
